Google Admits to Collecting Location Data - With it Turned Off

Wednesday, 22 November 2017 15:11
Written by Benjamin "Zeus" Heide

This is not good news from Google. They recently admitted to gathering location data on users - even when you have the feature turned off. There are options to choose to send location data to Google and even if you opt out, it appears that Google goes ahead and takes it anyway. While this is not really surprising, it's a bit disappointing that they'd do it. Google has certainly moved on from being a company that "could do no wrong".

Since the beginning of 2017, Android phones have been collecting the addresses of nearby cellular towers - even when location services are disabled - and sending that data back to Google. The result is that Google, the unit of Alphabet behind Android, has access to data about individuals’ locations and their movements that go far beyond a reasonable consumer expectation of privacy.